Opinion

In this week's blog we recognize the profession of teaching. We introduce our readers to the blogs of two teachers — a veteran blogger and a newbie blogger. Both are demonstrating the highest of professional skills: reflection. If you are a teacher-blogger, tell us about it, please!

The dominant educational model in the United States is still "education as acquiring stuff." Even when modern technologies are used to support this model, the hordes of unemployed and underemployed students — OUR children — are proof that this model is broken and ineffective.

K-12 is about to hit an Inflection Point – "a moment of dramatic change." The $100 computer is here; access is no longer THE roadblock. It is difficult to predict what will happen at an inflection point. Business as usual, however, is rarely the outcome.

Cathie and Elliot hold an intense conversation about the need for teachers to be provided with curriculum that has been built from the ground up exploiting the affordances of mobile devices using technology is going to have a positive impact on student achievement!

If you, your school, your district is considering purchasing mobile gear, RUN, don’t walk to a site Dr. Robbie Melton (Mobile Gadget Maven Extraordinaire) and her crew have created where you will find tips, reviews, descriptions, pictures, testimonials, etc., etc. etc. on all the "stuff" involved in supporting mobile learning. But before you run off, read a fun story about how Robbie and her Magical Gadget Bag saved our bacon at the UNESCO meeting in Paris (February 2014).

In a lively dialogue, mobilists Cathie Norris and Elliot Soloway discuss why telling teachers to just "integrate the technology into the curriculum" is a recipe for disaster — and they invite readers to tell their own tech transformation stories.

While web services that supported asynchronous collaboration on sites such as Facebook and Edmodo are the hallmark of Web 2.0, Social 3.0 is ushering in support for synchronous collaboration – with the Google Docs Editor as the pioneering example. And by 2017 every app and every webpage will be Social 3.0-ified and will support synchronous, real-time collaboration. You read it first!

Whitepapers

In 2012, Naperville Community Unit School District 203 identified the need for a learning management system that was simple enough for kindergarteners, powerful enough for high school seniors, and flexible enough for every student in between.At the time, Naperville was using an LMS that hadn’t been updated in more than five years and its limitations were starting to hinder the progress of this technically innovative and highly-collaborative district. Stakeholders wanted a tool that was media rich, supported mobile usage, and better facilitated online collaboration among teachers and students.
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